This band of EIGHT Indigenous brothers served in the Canadian Army during World War Two, following the path laid down by their father John Ballendine and his brother James, both crack snipers in The Great War. Pictured here are James on the left and his younger brother John on the right. They are wearing pre-war […]
Seventy-two years after my uncle RCAF pilot trainee Alan Light died in a training accident, I discovered a dramatic oil painting that shows the last moments of his life.
Arthur Bradford’s Spitfire was shot down over Normandy on D-Day, and he parachuted into the sea where he was promptly “rescued” by a landing craft, steaming towards the beach. He was unarmed, unprepared, and very, very unhappy. I interviewed Arthur Bradford at his comfortable lakeview home in Invermere, British Columbia before he passed away in […]
The D-Day decoys were part of Operation Fortitude, an elaborate, mind-boggling hoax that used rubber tanks, canvas ships, plywood aircraft, and even dummy soldiers to fool the Germans about where we secretly planned to land on D-Day. Everyone knew the Allies would eventually try to take back the continent. But when, and where? To refresh your knowledge […]
Wartime knitting was more than a hobby – it was an act of patriotism. Literally millions of women, children and even men in Allied countries used their knitting needles as weapons of war. If you weren’t a knitter, you might as well have been a Nazi! Countless knitted items were created and sent to the […]
Operation Manna saved thousands of Dutch civilians from starvation when the Allies stripped their bombers of weapons, and dropped tons of food instead. It was too late to save twenty thousand others who starved to death as the Second World War drew to an end. One woman describes how Operation Manna delivered her family from […]
A Jewish couple escaped the Holocaust by hiding inside the Scheffer household for two years, in a small town in Holland. Casey Scheffer, who moved to Canada after the war, told me how his courageous family accomplished this remarkable feat.
Rationing was a fact of life in the Second World War. For five long years people ate less meat, sugar and other products. But there were few complaints. Not only were we feeding the desperate British population, we were shipping enormous quantities of food to our own armed forces, and our prisoners of war. Why […]
Jewish pilot Georg Hein, sent to England as a teenager to escape certain death in a concentration camp, changed his name to Peter Stevens and became a decorated RAF pilot. This daring young man was shot down, captured, and spent four terrifying years as a German POW.
Princess Elizabeth, who late became Queen Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the British royal family, was born on April 21, 1926. Just six months after her thirteenth birthday, the world went to war. This determined teenager threw herself into the war effort and over her father’s objections, she even joined the armed forces and trained as […]
